If you're a good person living in the suburbs, you'll have already decked out your house with the latest in Christmas decoration technology.

I, on the other hand, put out two plastic candy canes and have kind of stopped at that. Which means I'm not the candidate to stick something like a wreath or a bow on the front of my car. I've never quite understood why people do this, but I usually see at least a few people driving Dodge Grand Caravans around an elementary school with these tied to the front and they're inoffensive enough. But why adorn the front of your car with something people put on their front door? And why the bow? This isn't a Lexus commercial.

The thing I'm seeing become increasingly prevalent is the full-blown car costume, the car reindeer. Sold by a company called Mystic Industries, this reindeer costumethat retails for $23, but you can find for much less in many other places. Maybe at that price it's perfect for people who want to dress up their VW Passat or Chrysler Sebring with two window-mounted antlers and a red foam nose on the grille.

No one's really going to mistake a metal thing with four wheels for Rudolph, though. And that nose doesn't light up as far as I know, so you'll have no better luck guiding your sleigh tonight than if you hadn't stuck it on your grille in the first place.

Trouble is, I see this as the automotive equivalent of the sweater with a light-up dancing Santa or those Christmas decorations that make noise and stuff. I feel like you've really got to be in the Christmas spirit to put something like this on your car. I don't know what the demographic for this kind of thing is. It seems like every other car going the opposite direction of me the other day had a pair of antlers. And in the local Kohl's parking lot, I found a last-gen Fusion, an Odyssey and a Volvo XC60 covered in that festiveness.

Of course, some car owners are much more tasteful about this. Some just stick a Christmas-themed Jack Ball on their 1970s-reminiscent fixed mast antenna and call it a day. And maybe that's your thing, too, but if you start having visions of Sugar Plum Fairies dancing in your head, you shouldn't be driving. And keep the Christmas carol humming to yourself. We're barely into December and I'll just walk out of a store if I hear John Travolta and Olivia Newton-John singing about the holidays.

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Oh, and if you want to decorate your car for more than one season a year, Mystic Industries will gladly sell you a raft of other accessories to celebrate various holidays. There's an alternative to the reindeer, with the "dress-your-car-as-a-Christmas-tree" collection. Or the snowman or elf sets. Then there's the relatively creepy Santa and Stockings costume. But there's a Valentine's Day costume, a St. Patrick's Day costume and several Halloween-themed pieces (no Slutty Pumpkin costume, sadly). Of course, I'm certain you could find year-round usage for the Cat Car Costume. I am not making this up.

Do you Jalops do this to your car? Share some pics, if you've got them, of some of the car costumes you're seeing this time of year. I promise not to scoff ... much.